I see a lot of really sour posts on this one about how it's stupid, ridiculous, how a P3 500 is just fine, how last year's game runs great..
They say it costs twice as much but only helps one game? Then I say it's a sign of things to come. They've said this same crap about 3D video board memory for years. "You don't need 64MB!!!" "You'll never use 128!!" "256? You're stupid!"
If the video boards all have gobs of memory, then the games will all start to have gobs of high resolution, bump mapped, great looking textures. Why is this a bad thing? When the next generation of games hits the shelves in a year or so, they'll use that video memory.
At my company, they have a service which automatically updates the web filter with new sites to ban, on a daily basis. They can click on what kind of stuff they want blocked - webmail, porn, sports, etc. Since that's pretty much all this company does for it's money, it's pretty thorough.
Fortunately, my company opts just to block webmail and porn, and we're not crappy when it comes to using mail for personal things - I run the e-mail system and I don't care what people use it for as long as they aren't abusing it. (I won't, however, go out of my way to help them recieve a newsletter or something else non-business related. If it works for you, fine, but if not, sorry!)
Some web mails will get through, sure, but the number is very small. All the major and not-so-major web-mail providers are blocked, including most universities and such.
I can't blame them for wanting to do this. We block all executable attachments at the gateway, but we can't control the content of Webmail attachments. We do have virus protection on all workstations and servers can't browse, but there's always a chance that a new virus will come out, before the scanners pick them up, and cause all sorts of shit. We run Windows everything, so it's a valid concern.
We have to work, that's a given. Many of us here on Slashdot have selected computers and technology as a profession, because SOMETHING about it we like.
Now, in the context of WE HAVE TO WORK FOR A LIVING, what would you rather do, software or hardware engineering?
The question wasn't "Would you rather be sitting on a beach or working with computer software?"
Well, I can't exactly blame you for trying to let everyone know that you've done a drug before. I did the same thing when I was 14.
Trying to make sure everyone knows that you're in the IN crowd - that you know what it's like to get HIGH. (well, obviously not on Acid if that's what you think it's like, though.)
People DO fall for it. All the fucking time. In any game, in many IRC channels, and this same old tired joke/IRC log/whatever has been posted on countless web sites and anywhere else in the past.
This is a sorry old story that's not new, not funny, and amazing that people like YOU think this is the first time this has ever happened?
Well apparently it wasn't so fucking obvious to half the people posting to this slashdot article, and to the person that submit the post, or to the person that submit it to the front page of Slashdot..
But right now, almost every computer on every desk has the Acrobat viewer installed. When Microsoft releases this, only Longhorn and XPSP3 will include it, and everyone else will have to go out and download it.
It won't be on more systems then PDF for a very long time.
The article says that there were several runs of spam. They did mention that they appeared to be coming from a single spammer, but more then a few spams were being shot out of AOL's cannons.
MAPS is a fairly respectable blacklisting service. We've used them for years. It's a pay-for service and they are usually on the money. Getting removed from maps is a fairly straight forward process too.
It's epidemic - it's like 128k is the defacto standard and it's terrible!
Really, anything with any sort of trebble/sybols/etc sounds like trash. And you can hear it a lot on the radio now since most of them have these digital juke-box things where they just click the song they want to play. All encoded at 128kbit, and you can hear the poor quality sound even over FM Radio.
CD-Quality is very good, and all this compressed garbage being sold online amazes me. I always thought that quality was supposed to get progressively better as music production technologies improved.
I think a lot of people don't even really notice because they've never really listened to the music on anything else - it sounds crappy on the radio and it sounds crappy from iTunes.
I'm not against compression itself, I'm against the degree of which it's used commonly in downloadable music.
Sheesh, I swear the majority of these folks on Slashdot work at very small three or four server shops.
There's no replacement for Outlook, really. That Ximian clone is pretty good, though. But getting your Outlook data into it might prove difficult.
And like the other guy down the line a little said, Access. It doesn't matter if OpenOffice Base is better - it will still be very painful to move access databases into it if you got some users they abuse the hell out of Access every chance they get.
It's not impossible but Word, Excel, and Powerpoint aren't the only parts of Microsoft Office.
When we did the mixed Office 97/2000 upgrade at our company (6,000 users, global, etc) all we had to do was send out a few e-mails outlining the major changes.
"You know what? I don't give a flying fuck about any imaginary auntie or grannie. In fact, truth be known I rarely give a fuck about real users either."
Who cares if you do or not? That's not what this article was for. This article was for people that DO GIVE A FUCK.
I think it's very possible, probable perhaps that a lot of the little things in a Linux distribution geared for end-users, not power users, get overlooked because they just don't take a step back and really think about it.
See, I *do* want as many people as possible to use Linux, because then more software will be written for it, and chances are good that a lot of the existing software will become increasing useful and stable. The larger the userbase, the more attention it gets. That's all there is to it.
If you can't see past your attitude of "I don't give a shit" and realize the good that would come out of better designed and more accessable software, then there's nothing else to say.
"I've always just tweaked the cupsd.conf file and added the printer (s)in the web interface. No major biggy there. This all just a storm in a teacup."
Aunt Tillie is supposed to be able to do this, eh?
While I firmly believe that many of the complaints about a Linux system being unfriendly are bunk, sometimes they're not.
To put it in perspective, do you think sharing a printer from one Windows XP box to another would be a very easy task for her? No, probably not. She might not even know to use the word "sharing" in this context!
But, if you told her the basics "You have to 'share' the printer on the computer connected to it, and then add it on the other computer" she *might* be able to trudge through it and make it happen.
So although neither task is easy for Aunt Tillie, be it on Windows or Linux, the Linux end of things can be a challenge for even a technical person.
It's getting better all the time though, and I don't see why getting Linux 'on the desktop' has to be rushed like so many people want it to be. I think it will happen naturally as long as things stay on the right track.
"Remember, the GPL isn't about keeping *your* code "free", it's about making *other people's* work GPLed."
Warped, man. Really warped.
The GPL *is* there to keep YOUR code free. I don't want you taking my stuff, repackaging it as your own, and selling it closed-source. Fuck that. I didn't spend time and effort writing something to give away to everyone, only to have some dipshit company make money off it.
If you want to take my code and change it a little, you STILL can't sell it closed source. You have to make those changes available to the public. I don't see how this is a bad thing?
The reason GNU/Linux has so much momentum and populatiry is the GPL. If it weren't for the GPL and Linux, the *BSDs wouldn't be as popular as they are today.
"Two college students took it upon themselves to figure it out and deploy that solution to the world."
That part is true. However, like another poster said (the first post actually) if they didn't come around we'd all just be using Yahoo, or Lycos, or one of the other companies that would probably be bigger if not for Google.
"Sergey and Brin take their job very serious."
How do you know? You know them personally? Or is this just what you read on a news clipping?
"Organizing and delivering a whole world's information/thoughts/opinions is a HUGE responsibility"
It's a search engine. It indexes web sites and delivers responses based on some criteria. It's cool stuff, for sure. But it's not like the world is in the balance and if Google gave the wrong responses world war would break out.
"they've carried it and with dignity. I see little if any abuses of the power they hold."
You stick with what works. Did you know that these guys are worth BILLIONS of dollars? And they're young?
Give Google some time. They're publically traded now. The two guys that created it will have less and less say about how things run. I mean, do you think every descision Microsoft makes rests solely on Gates?
"How many other companies could do what google does and resist the temptation to abuse their audience or subject them to slanted views/opinions or worse."
Google isn't the only game in town. If they started doing stuff like that, it's easy to just use something else. No software changes needed. No lock-in to Google. (yet.)
"Google's only agenda is to get you where you want to be."
No, wrong. SO wrong. Google's agenda is to MAKE MONEY.
Okay first of all this guy doesn't really seem to have much depth of knowledge.
Asking friends to REBOOT? Why not just ipconfig/flushdns? And For The Love Of God, DNS DOES NOT PROPAGATE. It's a referral system that caches.
I also have a really hard time taking someone seriously that, in the opening question, mentions something like "well, zealots will argue, and tin foil hats will bitch" or whatever. Yea, he's really unbiased..
TTL affects the time you should cache the records, at least he seems to get this. So, he can't think of one reason why a large ISP might want to ignore TTL's?
I'll name a couple and leave it to this guy to fill in the rest:
A) Because a lot of really terrible DNS admins set the value way too low and leave it there?
B) Because ISP's might have a need to keep their cache database activity to a resonable level?
GO on with your study! The results will probably prove to be very uninteresting.
Microsoft's RDP came from Citrix, as many people probably don't realize. Citrix came out with a product called Winframe for NT 3.x and it was very similar to Metaframe all the way until Metaframe XP.
Microsoft made a deal with Citrix to license some of their technology, and they put it into NT4 Terminal Server Edition.
But if you're serious about terminal servers on Windows, Metaframe is a MUST. It makes the system so much more manageable, smoother, and usable. And published apps are awesome if you want both thick clients for some applications (maybe apps that won't run on a TS, or CPU/Graphics intense apps like photoshop) and still benefit from the central administration and single point of maintenence.
If you've used a Windows terminal server, as most people have with the simpler administration mode, check out Metaframe - you won't believe how much better it feels to login and use the remote desktop, as well as how much better the administration is.
I think it's almost dangerous, too, the way a lot of kids are growing up with the Internet and relying on it as the only source of information.
Anyone can put anything on a web page. Wikipedia is neat, but it's NOT a reputable source. Google only shows you what other people put out there.
Books, encyclopedias, and research papers found in libraries are often very well researched and credited - it takes a lot more time, effort and money to put out printed materials and there's a lot more review, fact proving, and editing.
I love the Internet. It's awesome if you want to skim for information or if you want help with anything new in technology. But if you want to go deeper, you gotta see a library.
Slashdot Mirror
It ain't your medication - I felt the same way.
The guy says "I think" and "I feel as though" too many times for me to take it any more serious then a forum or Slashdot post.
It's some dude that thinks he can be an online "journalist" by posting garbage like that on a web site.
Phew, at least someone said it.
I see a lot of really sour posts on this one about how it's stupid, ridiculous, how a P3 500 is just fine, how last year's game runs great..
They say it costs twice as much but only helps one game? Then I say it's a sign of things to come. They've said this same crap about 3D video board memory for years. "You don't need 64MB!!!" "You'll never use 128!!" "256? You're stupid!"
If the video boards all have gobs of memory, then the games will all start to have gobs of high resolution, bump mapped, great looking textures. Why is this a bad thing? When the next generation of games hits the shelves in a year or so, they'll use that video memory.
I guess the Canadians are very proud of their VR room in York.
At my company, they have a service which automatically updates the web filter with new sites to ban, on a daily basis. They can click on what kind of stuff they want blocked - webmail, porn, sports, etc. Since that's pretty much all this company does for it's money, it's pretty thorough.
Fortunately, my company opts just to block webmail and porn, and we're not crappy when it comes to using mail for personal things - I run the e-mail system and I don't care what people use it for as long as they aren't abusing it. (I won't, however, go out of my way to help them recieve a newsletter or something else non-business related. If it works for you, fine, but if not, sorry!)
Some web mails will get through, sure, but the number is very small. All the major and not-so-major web-mail providers are blocked, including most universities and such.
I can't blame them for wanting to do this. We block all executable attachments at the gateway, but we can't control the content of Webmail attachments. We do have virus protection on all workstations and servers can't browse, but there's always a chance that a new virus will come out, before the scanners pick them up, and cause all sorts of shit. We run Windows everything, so it's a valid concern.
And the context.
We have to work, that's a given. Many of us here on Slashdot have selected computers and technology as a profession, because SOMETHING about it we like.
Now, in the context of WE HAVE TO WORK FOR A LIVING, what would you rather do, software or hardware engineering?
The question wasn't "Would you rather be sitting on a beach or working with computer software?"
Well, I can't exactly blame you for trying to let everyone know that you've done a drug before. I did the same thing when I was 14.
Trying to make sure everyone knows that you're in the IN crowd - that you know what it's like to get HIGH. (well, obviously not on Acid if that's what you think it's like, though.)
I'd say these kids would wipe out their computers just as often as people believe that some kid would actually do so.
The whole post seemed very staged if you ask me.
Unfortunately, it's so expert, that even the Experts can't find the thing.
I have my moments.
No, here's a clue for YOU.
People DO fall for it. All the fucking time. In any game, in many IRC channels, and this same old tired joke/IRC log/whatever has been posted on countless web sites and anywhere else in the past.
This is a sorry old story that's not new, not funny, and amazing that people like YOU think this is the first time this has ever happened?
The joke is on you, dullboy.
Well apparently it wasn't so fucking obvious to half the people posting to this slashdot article, and to the person that submit the post, or to the person that submit it to the front page of Slashdot..
I'll be driving off in my Eatmyassmobile now.
But right now, almost every computer on every desk has the Acrobat viewer installed. When Microsoft releases this, only Longhorn and XPSP3 will include it, and everyone else will have to go out and download it.
It won't be on more systems then PDF for a very long time.
The 127.1 joke has been around for ages..
The article says that there were several runs of spam. They did mention that they appeared to be coming from a single spammer, but more then a few spams were being shot out of AOL's cannons.
MAPS is a fairly respectable blacklisting service. We've used them for years. It's a pay-for service and they are usually on the money. Getting removed from maps is a fairly straight forward process too.
Spamcop, on the other hand, is a dog.
It's epidemic - it's like 128k is the defacto standard and it's terrible!
Really, anything with any sort of trebble/sybols/etc sounds like trash. And you can hear it a lot on the radio now since most of them have these digital juke-box things where they just click the song they want to play. All encoded at 128kbit, and you can hear the poor quality sound even over FM Radio.
CD-Quality is very good, and all this compressed garbage being sold online amazes me. I always thought that quality was supposed to get progressively better as music production technologies improved.
I think a lot of people don't even really notice because they've never really listened to the music on anything else - it sounds crappy on the radio and it sounds crappy from iTunes.
I'm not against compression itself, I'm against the degree of which it's used commonly in downloadable music.
Sheesh, I swear the majority of these folks on Slashdot work at very small three or four server shops.
There's no replacement for Outlook, really. That Ximian clone is pretty good, though. But getting your Outlook data into it might prove difficult.
And like the other guy down the line a little said, Access. It doesn't matter if OpenOffice Base is better - it will still be very painful to move access databases into it if you got some users they abuse the hell out of Access every chance they get.
It's not impossible but Word, Excel, and Powerpoint aren't the only parts of Microsoft Office.
When we did the mixed Office 97/2000 upgrade at our company (6,000 users, global, etc) all we had to do was send out a few e-mails outlining the major changes.
A stock Linux kernel, as of now, works great on a multitude of platforms. Solaris 10 can't do that.
And, as has been proven, it CAN be altered to run on *any* large SMP systems. Solaris 10 can't do that.
Plus, like the AC said. SUN BUILT THE DAMNED HARDWARE, of course their own kernel will work on it. They did all the alteration already.
"You know what? I don't give a flying fuck about any imaginary auntie or grannie. In fact, truth be known I rarely give a fuck about real users either."
Who cares if you do or not? That's not what this article was for. This article was for people that DO GIVE A FUCK.
I think it's very possible, probable perhaps that a lot of the little things in a Linux distribution geared for end-users, not power users, get overlooked because they just don't take a step back and really think about it.
See, I *do* want as many people as possible to use Linux, because then more software will be written for it, and chances are good that a lot of the existing software will become increasing useful and stable. The larger the userbase, the more attention it gets. That's all there is to it.
If you can't see past your attitude of "I don't give a shit" and realize the good that would come out of better designed and more accessable software, then there's nothing else to say.
"I've always just tweaked the cupsd.conf file and added the printer (s)in the web interface. No major biggy there. This all just a storm in a teacup."
Aunt Tillie is supposed to be able to do this, eh?
While I firmly believe that many of the complaints about a Linux system being unfriendly are bunk, sometimes they're not.
To put it in perspective, do you think sharing a printer from one Windows XP box to another would be a very easy task for her? No, probably not. She might not even know to use the word "sharing" in this context!
But, if you told her the basics "You have to 'share' the printer on the computer connected to it, and then add it on the other computer" she *might* be able to trudge through it and make it happen.
So although neither task is easy for Aunt Tillie, be it on Windows or Linux, the Linux end of things can be a challenge for even a technical person.
It's getting better all the time though, and I don't see why getting Linux 'on the desktop' has to be rushed like so many people want it to be. I think it will happen naturally as long as things stay on the right track.
"Remember, the GPL isn't about keeping *your* code "free", it's about making *other people's* work GPLed."
Warped, man. Really warped.
The GPL *is* there to keep YOUR code free. I don't want you taking my stuff, repackaging it as your own, and selling it closed-source. Fuck that. I didn't spend time and effort writing something to give away to everyone, only to have some dipshit company make money off it.
If you want to take my code and change it a little, you STILL can't sell it closed source. You have to make those changes available to the public. I don't see how this is a bad thing?
The reason GNU/Linux has so much momentum and populatiry is the GPL. If it weren't for the GPL and Linux, the *BSDs wouldn't be as popular as they are today.
"Two college students took it upon themselves to figure it out and deploy that solution to the world."
That part is true. However, like another poster said (the first post actually) if they didn't come around we'd all just be using Yahoo, or Lycos, or one of the other companies that would probably be bigger if not for Google.
"Sergey and Brin take their job very serious."
How do you know? You know them personally? Or is this just what you read on a news clipping?
"Organizing and delivering a whole world's information/thoughts/opinions is a HUGE responsibility"
It's a search engine. It indexes web sites and delivers responses based on some criteria. It's cool stuff, for sure. But it's not like the world is in the balance and if Google gave the wrong responses world war would break out.
"they've carried it and with dignity. I see little if any abuses of the power they hold."
You stick with what works. Did you know that these guys are worth BILLIONS of dollars? And they're young?
Give Google some time. They're publically traded now. The two guys that created it will have less and less say about how things run. I mean, do you think every descision Microsoft makes rests solely on Gates?
"How many other companies could do what google does and resist the temptation to abuse their audience or subject them to slanted views/opinions or worse."
Google isn't the only game in town. If they started doing stuff like that, it's easy to just use something else. No software changes needed. No lock-in to Google. (yet.)
"Google's only agenda is to get you where you want to be."
No, wrong. SO wrong. Google's agenda is to MAKE MONEY.
Okay first of all this guy doesn't really seem to have much depth of knowledge.
/flushdns? And For The Love Of God, DNS DOES NOT PROPAGATE. It's a referral system that caches.
Asking friends to REBOOT? Why not just ipconfig
I also have a really hard time taking someone seriously that, in the opening question, mentions something like "well, zealots will argue, and tin foil hats will bitch" or whatever. Yea, he's really unbiased..
TTL affects the time you should cache the records, at least he seems to get this. So, he can't think of one reason why a large ISP might want to ignore TTL's?
I'll name a couple and leave it to this guy to fill in the rest:
A) Because a lot of really terrible DNS admins set the value way too low and leave it there?
B) Because ISP's might have a need to keep their cache database activity to a resonable level?
GO on with your study! The results will probably prove to be very uninteresting.
Microsoft's RDP came from Citrix, as many people probably don't realize. Citrix came out with a product called Winframe for NT 3.x and it was very similar to Metaframe all the way until Metaframe XP.
Microsoft made a deal with Citrix to license some of their technology, and they put it into NT4 Terminal Server Edition.
But if you're serious about terminal servers on Windows, Metaframe is a MUST. It makes the system so much more manageable, smoother, and usable. And published apps are awesome if you want both thick clients for some applications (maybe apps that won't run on a TS, or CPU/Graphics intense apps like photoshop) and still benefit from the central administration and single point of maintenence.
If you've used a Windows terminal server, as most people have with the simpler administration mode, check out Metaframe - you won't believe how much better it feels to login and use the remote desktop, as well as how much better the administration is.
I think it's almost dangerous, too, the way a lot of kids are growing up with the Internet and relying on it as the only source of information.
Anyone can put anything on a web page. Wikipedia is neat, but it's NOT a reputable source. Google only shows you what other people put out there.
Books, encyclopedias, and research papers found in libraries are often very well researched and credited - it takes a lot more time, effort and money to put out printed materials and there's a lot more review, fact proving, and editing.
I love the Internet. It's awesome if you want to skim for information or if you want help with anything new in technology. But if you want to go deeper, you gotta see a library.